Ron Paul at the Clear Lake Tea Party

Ron Paul: Thank you. Sounds like my kind of crowd, this is great! And the revolution marches on, I love it. A lot has happened in the last couple of years and it is building. This is a grand day. This is just one of many, many of hundreds. There could be millions of people out there right now doing the same thing. The country is waking up and we should be very pleased with that happening.

You know it’s been a long time since I got first involved, as a matter of fact I had been at the 22nd district a few years back in the 1970s, ran for the first time in 1974. The first time I ran was in 1974 and guess what part of my platform was in 1974: Get rid of the Fed!

We are getting closer all the time. The time is right, we are going to get an audit, that is a growing sentiment. In the 1930s they claimed that we had too much freedom, too much capitalism and a gold standard and that caused the depression. The truth is that the depression was caused by the Federal Reserve System and that is the reason today that they can’t blame gold, because we don’t have a gold standard, we have had a paper standard since 1971 and if they come around wanting to find people to blame, they have to blame the Federal Reserve and the paper standard and it’s because we have ignored the constitution. All of the rules and regulations that we need are written in that little book we call the Constitution. We need to follow it.

In the last few months we have appropriated, over my strong objection, not tens of billions but hundreds of billions of dollars. And as it’s already been said, nobody even knows where the money went. But those who are in charge know where the money went. And unfortunately, it didn’t get into your pockets, it came out of your pockets. There is a characteristic of destruction of a currency and it means that when you destroy a currency, prices go up and you have economic trouble, and you transfer wealth from the poor and middle-class to the wealthy. That’s exactly what is happening. I didn’t even realize that even after the collapse of the financial system, they would be able to continue to transfer this wealth and that is exactly what they are doing. They are bailing out their buddies.

The TARP funds included 700 billion dollars. They gave Treasury 350 billion dollars with no strings attached. When this happened the people woke up and started screaming, “Where did the money go, what’s going on?” and they replied, “Oh, okay, we will check up and find out where the money went”. It’s criminal what they are doing.

They are running a monetary system that is based on counterfeit and fraud, that is what it is. The founders of this country were very adamant about the monetary system. They said no emitting bills of credit, not paper money, only gold and silver should be money. In 1792 they had the first Coinage Act and they had a penalty based in that Coinage Act. And the penalty for counterfeiting was death, that’s how strongly they felt about it. Now we legalize counterfeiting, I don’t know whether I should go through the whole point now that we should apply that too, you know, but that’s how important it is.

When you think of this budget that is totally out of control it is minor compared to the problem of the Federal Reserve System. Because we deal in hundreds of billions, that’s plenty big. But the Federal Reserve is dealing in trillions, they can create trillions of dollars and guess what, they have no obligation under the law to answer any questions and they don’t. Unless we pass HR 1207 and say, “We will audit you, we will find out [what is going on] “.

Once it is exposed what they are doing, how they are taking care of their friends on Wall Street, their friends overseas in foreign countries and all the mischief they’re involved in, believe me, the job of getting rid of the Fed will become much easier. Now, this is not a brand new idea, it’s been going on for a long time. From the very time the constitution was written the arguments throughout were similar. Jefferson wanted hard money, no central bank, Hamilton wanted a Central Bank and soft money. They fought over it. They did establish a national bank and Jefferson got rid of the first national bank. Andrew Jackson got rid of the second national bank. And it’s time now we get rid of the third and the biggest of all national banks.

I want very limited government, very, very limited. And the best guide that we have is our constitution. What is the purpose of the constitution? Very, very clearly, the instructions are that the constitution is to protect you, it is not to protect the government.

I have a strong belief and conviction that motivated me all my political career, and that is all political whether you think you want to get involved in politics or not is besides the point. You may be non-partisan and that is very good. But we are political activists because the founders were political activists, and if we do what is necessary, believe me, we can make these changes but we have to know and understand what the constitution says, and it is quite clear on what it says about all the issues. But the action that we take, the goals that I have heard already, the goals that we have all endorsed, it is the self-reliance and the responsibility. But the goal of all our actions should be the preservation of liberty.

If we know and understand how a free society works, believe me, we won’t have to worry about tomorrow. If we lose everything today, just as was described a few minutes ago, everything was lost but there was more freedom here, and right now our wealth in this country has all been based on debt and it is being liquidated. And if all our wealth is liquidated and we have just one thing left, liberty, and we are allowed to go back to work, have our property protected, have a sound currency, have the contracts protected, believe me, it would be a short period of time in which we will all be back on our feet again.

If we are truly humanitarians… sometimes when we argue for liberty we are accused that we are selfish and all we want to do is take care and accumulate wealth. But if we are truly humanitarian, you have argue for freedom, because it is under freedom that you take care of the maximum number of people in the fairest manner and that’s what we have to argue for.

It is that free society that we have been given and we would lose if we don’t do something. Not only does it produce the greatest amount of prosperity for us all, but it also did something else, which is to me very important. Even if it didn’t produce the greatest amount of prosperity, which I am convinced it would and does, I would still want my liberties because when you get your freedoms, what happens is that it releases a creative energy that is within each and every one of us, and then that allows us to strive for our self-excellence and our goals in life. If we have our freedoms we can do that. If you are in a slave camp it is very difficult to develop your excellence and promote your qualifications and all that you want to do and like. That is what the goal should be. Liberty is the answer, not the welfare state, not the warfare state, we are not to be the policeman of the world, draining our resources.

I understand I have a very short time and I will quickly finish and tell you what I think we could do in the transition, because if they say, “Well, do what you should do to try to prevent this problem”. There is a way. Right now we’re going in the wrong direction. We spent too much, we borrowed too much, we printed too much, we regulated too much. We get into trouble so we spend more, borrow more, inflate more and regulate more. We can’t get out of this. Let me tell you, there are a lot of people who have become dependent on some of our programs at home. The Medicare system and the children and all this. I do not believe you attack that. But we spend a trillion dollars a year marching around the world, getting ourselves into trouble and getting our people killed and killing other people, what we could do is save hundreds of billions of dollars, bring our troops home, have a stronger national defense, put some of that money against the deficit, and then take care of the people who really need the help, the infrastructure, and these other things.

Unfortunately, the transition is not going to be allowed to as most likely. So I suspect that now that the financial house of cards has collapsed, the foundation — which is the dollar — is only sand and it will be destroyed and everything that we’re doing in Washington, we’re destroying the dollar. When the dollar collapses, believe me, you will want to know where your friends are because we will have a struggle and we will have to answer the very important questions, “What should the role of the government be?” and it’s not the nanny state, it’s the protection of liberty.

4 Comments:

Sir,
You can bet I will be there to defend liberty. Many can see how this is affecting our lives and our children. I love my Country and if I have to try my best to protect her from anyone or her self I will.

Ron Paul is the perfect spokesperson for these tea parties! He has preached the virtues of fiscal conservatism and free will for nearly 40 years! It is great that the common man has begun to truly appreciate the value of his commentary. After the success of the April 15th tea parties, another round of demonstrations has been pkanned for the 4th of July. These Independence Day Tea Parties promise to be bigger and better organized than their predecessors. www.reteaparty.com is a great site to find or organize your own local tea party. It is a great source for news related to tea parties and a great platform to expand the base of your own Independence Day Tea Party. Check it out: www.reteaparty.com

I'm a 26yr. old Texan and I would like to say that I do am fed up with our national goverment. These taxes and lies have got to stop. I love my country and state, but I feel that my country does not love me. Life has been hard since G.Bush and now with Obama. I have notice that a price of bread went from 59cents to $2.00! Has our country gone mad? What is someone like me to do? I cant smake in a bar! My cigs cost $7.00 a pack! Our country was built on tabacco!Have we turned our backs on what this nation was built on like the Constitution?
Why has our goverment not done anything to block the boarder? I'm tired of my country turn into a boarder city of Mexico. If anyone should be taxed more it sould be the ones who come here. Their T.V. stations that are a 2:1 over the english ones! This is my country sir! I was born in Houston,Tx 1983 and I have my rights!
Or atlease I use too! I have been hearing rumors that our President wants to band the right to bar arms, is this true?
Cause if it is...we should do something! What happened to our honor and pride in America?
Texas needs to unite and fight with our brother and sisters to the north in washington d.c.. Please sir I would love to hear what it is who have to say on my commits towards our nations troubles.

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